


Meet Me at the Hellmaw

by Insomiak



Category: South Park
Genre: Blood, Drama, F/F, M/M, Mild Gore, Other, Romance, Superheroes, Supernatural Elements, but they fight demons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 05:50:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12270174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insomiak/pseuds/Insomiak
Summary: Who the hell has time for school when the whole damn town is inside a hellmouth?  When demons pop up at random to tear civilians apart?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Basically they're in their last year of high school, fight demons in secret to keep South Park safe, pairings are listed, and there's some form of plot involved. 
> 
> Eventual warnings: Violence, drug use, death (@Kenny), some k2 involved but the listed pairings are the main ones, and general offensive rhetoric bc it's South Park. I'll add them to the tags as they come up.
> 
> This fic is for my relaxation and sanity from other stuff I'm writing. I always work hard, but... I guess just keep that in mind.
> 
> It'd be cool if you commented to lmk you liked it, if you like it! :)

 

   “Butters.”The name seems to reverberate off the wood walls of the café, smacking Kenny right across the jaw as if in defiance.Because he has no fucking right, and he knows, but somehow Butters had asked.Is here.He’s sat quietly in a dark corner, had been smiling fondly at empty air before Kenny had spoken his name.Now he’s staring mouth gaping open like all of his surprise and indignation and disbelief - from seeing Kenny here - could fit inside it; is rushing out, to smack Kenny again in the face, just to make it absolutely clear to him that he has no fucking right asking Kenny here. That Kenny shouldn’t be here.

“K-Kenny!”His bright voice trips. “You’re-You didn’t…” 

_I just can’t anymore, Ken._

_Why?I thought…_

It hadn’t made any sense.Kenny had been so sure Chaos had wanted to join their side.He can still remember the long talks on a quiet roof he and Chaos had had, plans for the future, strives for felicity in this backward, static town.Plans to get him the hell away from Cartman, at least, if not his entire fucked-up family.So he doesn’t understand why Butters had joined forces with Cartman, after a year of planning a way to get Chaos the fuck out of there.Did the fatass managed to fool Butters into believing that the Coon was on the good side, and Kyle and the rest of them were the true villains?Would Butters really have fallen for that? 

   No matter which way Kenny turns it, the breakup had been true — Butters had really left him and joined Cartman for good.

That was three weeks ago, and last night Butters had asked to meet Kenny at Tweak’s Coffee.Like a fucking Pavlovian Dog Kenny came, eager just to hear his voice and see him again - what a fucking joke he is. Butters had lied to him.Worse than that, he’d betrayed Kenny, taken all of his words spoken in the darkness together and shat a giant hot shit all over them.And somehow still Kenny was in _love_.Damn it.

He sits down across from Butters, refusing to show how affected he really is.“So that’s it, then.”Butters doesn’t speak.“You’re with _him_ now.”

The tea in Butters’ hand spills as he hurries to clarify a point that ought to mean nothing to Kenny by now.“I’m not _with_ -with him!” 

“Okay.” Kenny suddenly wishes he was ten years old again and could hide in his hood, but drowns the insecure thought and glares at his ex and now new enemy.“What did you call me here for?”

Butters opens his mouth and shuts it and does so three more times, squeezing the paper cup.Kenny ignores the worry that he might burn himself because, like Butters assuring Kenny he’s not with Cartman, Kenny also ought not give a flying fuck about Butters burning his hands.“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“ _What_.” 

“Well you haven’t been going to school-”

Who the hell has time for school when the whole damn town is inside a hellmouth?When demons pop up at random to tear civilians apart? When Barbra Streisand visits on occasion to vaporize pedestrians?When someone you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with dumps you and clears you out like a bacterial skin infection and metaphorically flips off all of your combined hard work by joining the opposite side when before at least Chaos had just been floating somewhere awkwardly in the middle of the superhero civil war shit storm— 

“It’s none of your business,” is all Kenny says.

“Ken…”

He folds his arms and leans back.“Was there something important?Some news from your _boss_?”

Butters has the nerve to look like he’s the one hurting.“N-No.”

Kenny clamps down hard on his bottom lip, but cannot seem to hold it in, always loses his rationality around Butters.“Can you just tell me why?Why did you ditch me for that sociopath?”

“I…”Butters draws his hands away from the warmth of his tea.He watches the thin lines in the cheap wooden table.“I told you before, I’m not who I used to be.” 

“Bullshit.”

“You… You can go on not believing me all you want, Ken, but I really mean it!I’m _wrong_ on the inside now." 

More of the same shit he’d said when he’d broken up with Kenny.He’s lying, Kenny knows that much, but that only makes this worse.Without another word or a single glance Butters’ direction, Kenny pushes himself away from the table and walks out of the café, wondering why the hell he’d even shown up though the answer presents itself quietly and constantly in the thudding of his hopeless heart.

 

* * *

 

“Dude is she there?” Stan is asking, his head still buried in a book he’s not actually reading.

Kyle sighs, looking away from the book he is actually reading. He gazes around the library, but they’re still the only two inside. “No dude, she’s not.” He looks back down at his book. “Why don’t you just call her?”

“No way. You know.”

“We’ve known her since we were five years old. Does she really still make you that nervous?”

“There is a bucket under my seat.” 

Kyle raises an eyebrow at the side of his best friend’s head, before leaning down to check.There really is one. “Fuck, dude.” 

“Yeah.” 

“But we hang out with her pretty often now,” Kyle says, returning to his book again. He won’t let Stan and his Ten Year Boner stop him from finding out what happens to Figgens in the next chapter. 

Stan sighs. “Yeah but that’s different.”

“How, exactly?” 

“She’s not Wendy then. She’s… you know.” 

Kyle scutches up his face. “Wearing spandex? Which should make it harder to talk to her?” 

His best friend lets out a sigh as long-suffering as his crush on Wendy Testaburger. “You know it’s not like that. Please don’t make me talk about feelings at school.” 

“You say that like I usually make you talk about feelings.”

“Uhh that’s because you _do_ dude.” Stan waves a hand around as if gesturing to the ‘feelings’ Kyle’s apparently trying to get him to talk about. “You’re like… all about feelings.”

Kyle sets his book down and glares at the Well of Whining beside him. “What?”

“You’re always the one who—”

Of course, Wendy comes into the library then, Bebe beside her, and Kyle doesn’t get to hear what he’s always the one to do. Stan’s attention is snapped away and his eyes lock and focus on dark hair. Wendy laughs at something Bebe says, and Stan’s whole face lights up. Kyle’s watched it do that for over a decade.

“Stan,” Kyle says, nudging him with a foot, “Get off your ass. Go.”

“Come with me,” Stan says, gripping Kyle’s arm. “You can ask Bebe out. Double date.”

Bebe’s cool, but Kyle would rather eat sandpaper. “No way dude. You’re on your own.” 

“What if she says no?”

“Then you can finally get over the ten year long crush you’ve had on her? Move on, date other girls, maybe try a new hobby…” 

Stan kicks him. 

“Ow! What the hell?” 

“I’m serious.” 

Kyle rubs at his ankle and glares. “So am I. Wendy is really nice dude. She’s not gonna make fun of you. Just go over.” Stan doesn’t move. Kyle grips at his book, irritated. “I swear to fucking jesus if you don’t get up and ask her out and I have to go through _another year_ of listening you talk about her I will personally cut off your arm and shove it up your ass.” 

“That’d be easier than asking her out.”

Kyle slams his book shut. “Fine.” He stands up, making sure his chair scrapes across the cold ceramic floor, and opens his mouth wide. “Hey, Wendy!”

“Dude what the fuck!!” There’s a satisfying crack in his best friend’s voice.

Wendy turns and waves at him. “Hey Kyle!” 

“Yeah, hey.” Kyle doesn’t smile, but it’s not Wendy’s fault. Not really. “Stan wants to talk to you for a sec. Can you come over?”

“Oh.” She looks over at Bebe who only shrugs. Then she turns back towards Kyle. “Sure, I guess.”

“Great.”

Kyle nods at her, picks up his book, and immediately leaves the library.

It is a shitty thing to do — he’d be the first to admit that. But he can’t spend another year, their senior year, listening to Stan fucking drone on about how much he likes Wendy, how soft her hair looks, how cool she is, how whatever the heck else he likes about her. It’s been ten years and Kyle is _done_.If he can’t get over it, he can at least stop watching his best friend wallow in self-pity because he can’t be with the person he likes. No need of both of them doing _that_ bullshit. And maybe— he’s hoping, had done some light reading— maybe watching Stan with someone else will shock his system or whatever. Re-start it.

He heads towards chem, an hour early. He’d done enough extra classes last year to only have to take three a semester this year. They’re chem, bio, and calc. Brainiac, Stan had started to call him. Big Ass Nerd. Whatever. Kyle has shit he wants to do with his life. Sending demons back to hell hasn’t paid well so far. And what does Stan think he’s going to do with D in everything? Play soccer for the rest of his life? Walk dogs? He’s not fucking preparing for anything, and they graduate in six months.

“I don’t care,” Kyle says to himself, knowing it’s a lie. All the other shit aside Stan is his best friend. Of course he cares. But does it have to feel like a fucking betrayal? If Stan wants to drive his life into a hole, so what? They’ll have to be apart after this year. Kyle’s getting the hell out of South Park as soon as he graduates. It won’t matter. 

“Woah,” Kenny’s voice slips over his shoulders, familiar and warm like always, “The hell’s wrong with you?”

Kyle slams his back into the lockers. “Stan’s asking Wendy out." 

“Ah.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Kyle rubs at his forehead, messing up his hair. “How’d it go with Butters?”

Kenny snorts. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well.”

“I know you don’t believe me,” Kenny starts, leaning in closer. He’s never had a problem with personal space. Somehow, it had never felt weird, either. “But our Stanley—”

“Really don’t want to talk about it.” Kyle sighs and leans into his friend. It’s so easy to breach that space with Kenny. “I’ll be out of here in six months. It’s fine.”

Kenny shrugs. “Alright babe.” 

“Do you have to call me that?” 

“Hey, Stan might be blind, but the rest of us aren’t.” Kenny grins, wolfish and long like it’s always been. “You’re a total babe, Kyle.”

Kyle snorts despite himself, laughter threatening to bubble over.A smile slips out instead. He shakes his head, taking a slow breath. “You gonna start coming to classes again, then?”

Kenny shrugs. “Guess so.” 

“Want help getting caught up?” 

“Please.”

“Want to get shitfaced with me and Craig on Friday?” 

Kenny laughs. “Definitely.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a yellowing sheet of paper, crumpled until he opens it up. “I found this, by the way. Might help us figure something out.”

Kyle looks down at the sheet. It’s an insignia, one he hasn’t seen before. “Think Craig will know what to do with it?”

“Maybe.”

 

* * *

 

Miss Wharf, their chemistry teacher, gives them a set of titration labs to finish. It’s easy enough for Kyle, and Kenny is too far behind to have any hope of doing it, so they sit beside Craig and Bebe and show them the insignia instead. Miss Wharf is a good teacher, at least in Kyle’s opinion, but South Park High has a large drop-out rate; she has at least ten other students with grades worse than their’s to deal with. Including Stan who is apparently skipping, again. She won’t notice.

“What do you think it is?” Kyle asks after Craig and Bebe have time to look at it.

Bebe whips her phone out and takes a picture, then begins typing in a flutter of clicks. Craig re-draws it in his notebook, one full of similar markings.The demons always come with a sigil on their bodies. So far, it’s been the only way to send them back.

They haven’t found a new one in nearly a year.

“Where did you see it?” Bebe asks, looking up from her phone for a moment. Kyle wants to ask her how things went with Stan and Wendy. He tries to read her, maybe to see if she seems happy, or makes some sort of camaraderie eye-contact with her — _our best friends are dating, how cool is that?_ — but she doesn’t. Her expression stays focused.

Kenny slips the sheet back into the pocket of his black pants. “In a dream,” he says. “I don’t think it’s crazy to think they can get in our heads.” 

“No,” Craig says. “It’s crazy, but shit went nuts here years ago.”

“What was the dream about?” Bebe asks. 

Kenny looks uncomfortable, which is to say his shoulders go slightly stiff, but Kyle’s known him well enough and long enough to understand.

After a few beats of silence, Kenny answers. “It was on me.” 

“You were the demon?” Bebe asks, not in shock, only a straight forward question.

Kenny nods. She looks back down at her phone, typing in a flurry.

“Just a dream dude,” Kyle says. “I had a dream once about getting reassignment surgery. I really wanted it in the dream.” 

“You’d make a sexy girl, Kyle,” Kenny says, grinning. 

“Fuck yeah I would.” Kyle raises his hand for a high-five, which Kenny meets with a laugh.

Bebe rolls her eyes. “I don’t know if that’s offensive or very sweet.”

“Hey guys.” Stan’s voice breaks through their group. Kyle feels his smile drop for a second. “What’s going on?”

Kenny has his wolfish smirk back. “Just talking about how cute Kyle is.”

Stan’s eyebrows raise and a confused noise slips out between closed lips. 

Kyle sputters. “Okay no we _weren’t_.”

“I think we were. I’ve been telling you all day you’re a total babe,” Kenny says, nodding with his chin held high. “What do you think, Stanley?”

Stan doesn’t look at Kyle. He laughs, delayed and confused. “Uhh well,” he scratches at his head just below his ear, dropping his backpack on the floor, “It’d be really shitty of me to call you ugly dude.” He does look at Kyle then. “You’re not ugly.”

“Woah how romantic,” Kenny says, completely flat. “Careful you’ll make him faint.”

“Whatever.” Stan takes a seat next to Kyle. “What were you guys really talking about?”

Bebe answers. “Kenny found a new symbol…” While she explains the details to him, Kyle tries to edge away from his friend. There’s too much warmth coming off him. He always fucking radiates heat like some sub-section of the sun.

“Shit.” Stan looks at Kenny. “Do you think it’s connected to Butters somehow?”

“What the fuck?” Kenny snaps. “ _How_?” 

“Chill, I didn’t mean Butters is a demon or anything,” Stan says, very slow and clear. It makes Kyle’s mouth spread in a small smile just as calm and slow. Stan can be an idiot, but he’d always been careful talking about Butters with Kenny. “But c’mon dude, do you really think _Butters_ would join Cartman willingly? Something’s going on.”

“Why would my dream have anything to do with it?”

“Don’t know. Just a thought.” Stan holds his hands up defensively.

Kyle nods, folding his arms over the table and leaning forwards towards Kenny. “He’d never go evil.” 

“Cartman’s not evil, exactly,” Bebe says. “Just a jackass.”

“Still. I thought you two - I thought you had a thing going.Two super teens meeting by moonlight on the lonely rooves of South Park, spilling the dark secrets of their guts to each other and all that shit,” Stan says.

Kenny snorts. 

Stan frowns at him for a moment. “You know what I mean.” He leans back in his seat. Kyle catches a whiff of his body wash.“I thought… I mean, Butters was never much of a villain anyway.What’s the worst thing we ever stopped him from doing?”

Bebe hums in thought.“That time he stole baked goods from that Family First fundraiser?" 

“Yeah, and he gave it all to an orphanage,” Stan says.“Not exactly menacing.More like Robin Hood.” 

Kenny folds his arms and stares down at his textbook.“What’s your point?He chose a side.It isn’t ours.”

Stan looks over at Kyle.There’s a pause - Kyle can’t imagine what it means. Is Stan asking him to field this one? He shakes his head emphatically. _This is all on you dude, you brought it up._

Stan kicks him under the table before he starts talking. Kyle kicks him back, just to keep things even.

“Just because he’s with the Coon doesn’t mean he had to dump you, though.You’d been pussy-footing around each other for a year while Chaos was still technically a villain. _Your_ villain.So what the hell dude?Why’d he really dump you?”

Kyle punches Stan in the arm for being insensitive.“ _Dude_.”

“What? I’m trying to figure shit out!”

“God you…”

“What?” 

Kyle feels like clawing his own eyes out. He’s not sure what actions are appropriate anymore. He really shouldn’t be patrolling Stan’s behaviour. He really shouldn’t care if his body heat is wafting.

Kenny starts talking, and Stan looks away from Kyle to listen.

“He just kept saying he was wrong inside, rotting and corrupted.And he just couldn’t do it anymore.That… he’d been lying to me, and saw things Cartman’s way.”

“Wait. Is he _with_ -with Cartman?”

“No,” Kenny says and it’s too fast and defensive and his fists curl up like two scared cats in a corner, “At least he told me he wasn’t.” 

“Man.”Stan puts a hand on Kenny’s shoulder“Fuck that. I bet if you go to wherever you two normally meet up at night, Chaos will be there.This just sounds like more of the same crap to me.Like he’s still confused, you know?I don’t think he’d go full season two Zuko on you.”

“Okay,” Bebe says, looking up from her phone, “I have a lead on the symbol. Kenny, go try to meet up with Butters, see if you can get some answers from him. Craig and I will handle the rest for now.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos!

The weekend arrives fast enough, and with it the Friday night of drinking Kyle had offered Kenny.

Getting drunk with Stan and Kyle is always interesting, because Kyle is intolerably smitten with his best friend and Stan is a giant clueless weiner about it and Kenny is cynical as hell so it’s just _hilarious_.There’s a lot of heart-felt staring while the black haired boy chatters obliviously at Kenny about how shitty whatever new game is, longing looks when Stan tosses his head back to laugh roaringly at some story Kenny tells, and these depressive, dissipative sighs that range from ‘holy hell he’s beautiful’ to ‘shit i’ll never kiss him’ back and forth like the tick-tock of some love-clock.A countdown until Stan explodes and vomits, probably literally, all his feelings out and Kyle, having never considered that Stan might feel the same, inevitably hits him and screams ‘DUDE WHAT THE FUCK?’ with just a hint of uncertainty, of questions, until his face heats up and he exits in a flurry of anger and confusion.

Kenny has thought a _lot_ about this.Kyle has had it for Stan since freshmen year, and as far as Kenny can see Stan’s probably had for for Kyle since they were fucking born so he doesn’t notice the difference. 

Lately, though, something’s been off. And now Stan’s asked Wendy out, apparently.If for a second Kenny believed Stan actually liked Wendy that would be fine. He just wants his friends to be happy. But there’s some sick psycho-semantic aftertaste to the way Stan chases after her; a reaction, more than any real intent. It looks like Stan thinks he’s _supposed_ to like her.

Convincing either Kyle or Stan of any of this is impossible. All Kenny’s ever been able to do is quietly nudge them — and that hasn’t really worked.Stan’s fucking blind and Kyle’s weirdly stubborn about it. Normally he’s more level-headed. Normally he likes to talk things through.

Kenny used to talk to Chaos about it, about Kyle and Stan, when they’d first started meeting at night a year ago.Chaos had laughed until Kenny urged that he was serious.His best friends really did like each other.

Shrouded in the shadows made from moonlight, he’d even told Chaos about his power, his inability to die. Butters had been the only one to ever believe him, and that was amazing - more than he could explain.But how could he ever be normal?Do something like date?There must be something fundamentally wrong with him, never being able to die.  

 _Fuck normal,_ Chaos had said with a large grin and pupils blown wide, then grabbed Mysterion’s hand so tight the fingers went bloodless, _You are the way you are._

“Hey, Kenny.”

The blond jumps and spills beer on Stan’s living room carpet.“Uh- sorry,” he says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stan says.He wipes the beer with a sock foot.Kyle cringes at his friend, but Stan ignores him.“You okay man?” He asks Kenny.

“Yeah.Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Kyle, Stan, and Craig look at each other.The three of them are pressed against the couch, sitting on the floor with netflix running on the tv.“Well I mean…” Kyle starts, trailing off before he commits to his sentiment, “We’re sorry about Butters, Kenny.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a long awkward pause. Kenny usually smiles to let them know he’s fine, but he can’t be assed right now.

“Man,” Stan says, breaking apart the silence and handing Kenny another beer, “Fuck that fatass.Dude, you and Butters were— fuck fuck— _are_ , you are really… he made you so happy. This is fucking lame.”

Kenny snorts.“Oh well.”

“Oh well _nothin_ ’!” Stan sets his beer down, apparently for dramatic effect. Behind him Kyle rolls his eyes and Craig starts laughing. “You’re goin’ afer him _tonight_!”

Kenny hadn’t done what Bebe had asked last week. He hasn’t tried to talk to Butters again.

“Stan’s drunk, but he’s right,” Kyle says. “We can stay here and do some research. You should go try to find him.”

Kenny does smile then.He leans forward far into Kyle’s personal space, grinning wide.“How could I say no to those big green eyes?”

“You can’t,” Kyle says, for once not making any jokes about the flirting. He holds Kenny’s gaze steady. “So go do it.”

Kenny grins and leans in all the way, kissing Kyle’s cheek. He hums into it before pulling back, still grinning. “I love it when you order me around, babe.”

Kyle laughs. Kenny smiles for real then — he hasn’t heard him laugh much since last year.

From the corner of his eyes he can see Stan squinting, watching them closely. 

“Just go dude,” Kyle says.

“Alright.” Kenny makes to stand up. “I’m out. Let me know if you guys find anything.”

“‘Course.”

Against his better judgment, Kenny is going out as Mysterion.He, like the rest of them, brings his uniform everywhere.He changes in Stan’s bathroom and heads out.

Telling himself he’s just going to check over the town, Mysterion bounds out the window and into the dark heart of night.Of course, South Park is absolutely peaceful at the moment.It’s always peaceful when he has all the time and will in the universe to fight monsters.Shit only seem to go down during school or when a new episode of whatever they’re watching that week comes on.

Mysterion is left trailing the tops of buildings and the wet floors of alley ways with nothing to do but think. And the harder he tries to not think about going to look for Chaos at their old spot, the more he does think about it until he gives in, because being potentially immortal has given him a wider perspective on life and the universe and he generally doesn’t let indignation or pride get in his way.

And his friends had lit some pathetic, half-assed flame in his sempiternal heart that Mysterion will listen to because it involves Chaos, and things had started to feel a lot less shitty with him.Even though all they’d had were these night time meetings and occasional glances at school, it had calmed him down, and it had gotten him away from his own family, if you could even call them that.They’d been talking about running away, or at least getting an apartment together for their last year of high school.

If Mysterion could only hold onto some part of Chaos, then maybe he _could_ still convince him to join their side.That matters more than their relationship status.He needs to be safe.

Mysterion reaches the South Park Bowling Alley in minutes and climbs the fire escape and then rafters to the roof.It’s flat, windy, and littered with broken bottles.For a moment Mysterion thinks he’s alone, until a soft gasp to his left - the opposite side from where they had normally sat - makes him turn around sharply.

“Ke-” the begging sounds of his name are cut short with a choke and corrected, “I mean- Mysterion.”

He hadn’t expected Chaos to really be here and stares at him for a long moment, wondering at the white light reflecting off his brown eyes.The blood in his heart solidifies with the need to reject Chaos, not wanting to be vulnerable, not wanting to chase and chase him.But Mysterion clenches his fists and sits down next to him in an angry heap, lanky legs dangling over the side of the building.He breathes out slowly. 

   “Chaos.Why are you here?”Chaos sniffles.Mysterion looks over at him.“Something’s happening, right?Just tell me.”

“N-No,” he says, wiping his eyes, “I’m rotten!”

“You are not.”

“Am to!”

Mysterion rubs his left temple, feels dirt under his hand as he grips the building’s ledge. “I’m not doing this.”Stan and Kyle must be right.There’s something forcing Chaos to join the Coon.Why else would he be here?“How are your parents?” He asks instead. It’s something they used to talk about.

“Oh.” Chaos kicks the side of the building, looking a little surprised. “The same, I- I guess.”

“I still think you need to move out.”

Chaos doesn’t reply. He’s probably confused. Why would Mysterion be talking to him like nothing’s changed? It’s easy enough — For Kenny, nothing _has_ changed.

With a quick and quiet rush Mysterion feels the way he had before, that first night when Chaos had saved his life.Though it had been pointless and made him angrier than he’d ever been ( _don’t ever risk your life for mine again!Fucking never again!_ ), it had flooded him with irrepressible humbleness and stark disbelief that anyone would look out for _him_.That someone would save his life.

Fuck it. Kenny is sure Chaos isn’t with the Coon because he wants to be.It had never made sense anyway.He had been letting his anger get to him.Everyone’s right — something’s going on.

Mysterion is about to reach for Chaos’ hand and say as much, when a call booms from the dark streets.

It’s a sharp, shrill cry, cutting through the cold air in South Park. Mysterion drops his hands from Chaos’s and looks out over the rooftops.

“What was that?” Chaos asks from beside him.

“Don’t know.” Mysterion stands, not looking back. “Better go find out.”

 

* * *

 

Craig Tucker is not a hero. He is not a fighter, he is not endowed with any supernatural power, and he does not want to be out on the streets with his demon-fighting friends. Stan and Kyle — Toolshed and Kite, whatever. They can actually do shit. Toolshed’s strong and can throw cars and carry civilians like they’re a bunch of roses, Kite can fucking _fly_. When they’d learned all this Craig still doesn’t know. He’s pretty sure it was all imaginary when they were kids. All he knows is that he’s Craig, just Craig, and what he’s really good at is staying at home and the hell out of the way.

He’s no a wimp, but what the fuck is he supposed to do against monsters from hell? They don’t get offended by his middle finger. He’s got nothing.

“ _Craig_!!”

That being said, one’s got his waist wrapped tight in a long tentacle, running down the dark street with its six spider-like legs. The wind blew his hat off six blocks ago. He’d scream, but honestly he’s over it.

“Screw this,” Craig says to himself. Not to the demon spider carting him down the street. It doesn’t give a shit.The only reason it even grabbed him was to get Kyle and Stan moving. Or Toolshed and Kite — god _whatever_. Do they have to have such fucking awful names? How the hell does Kyle go around calling himself the Human Kite?

The giant spider skids to a stop at the end of the main highway. Craig’s neck snaps, cracking in his ears.

“Ow.”

“Craig!”

Toolshed stops in front of the monster, Kite landing beside him neatly.

“It’s super gay that you can fly, dude,” Craig says as the monster hangs him upside-down in front of his friends.

Kite rolls his eyes. “Do you want us to leave you here?”

“Whatever. You’d still be gay.” 

Kyle folds his arms and glares at him. Craig shrugs, the action a little harder when he’s hanging by his ankles.

With a sudden jerk the spider hauls him up and away. Wind rips past him as he’s whipped around, and his lungs feel like they’re caving in, unable to breathe. The beastdrops him onto its back.Craig lands hard on his side.

Being friends with chosen sons of bitches superheroes is the stupidest thing that has ever happened to him. Ever. Normal people with normal sons of bitches friends don’t get snatched up by hellions and tossed around like a sack of shit. Normal people his age get drunk illegally and bitch about how no one wants to date them and fail tests and take drivers ed. Craig would _love_ to take drivers ed.

With a groan, he pushes himself up so he’s sitting on the giant demon-spider’s back.Kite’s already up in the air, trying to get at him. Stupid plan. This spider-demon-freak has about a million snapping tentacles. Toolshed’s just standing there, gripping an M9 down at his side. Stan might have super strength but it doesn’t seem to ever fucking _do_ anything for them, and there's only so much laser powe in a drill, so he’d started “packing heat” as he calls it. A gun is a tool — kind of — according to the definition of ‘tool’ in the dictionary. He’d made them look it up.

To summarize: Craig is screwed, because his two super friends are super duper fucking useless.

The demon grabs him again and chucks him onto the cold concrete. He hears his shoulder crack, but doesn’t feel it. The monster looms over him. The pavement under his back seems to vibrate.

He’d dead. He’d dead he’s dead he’s dead.

Well it’s been a mediocre 19 years. Okay — okay. It’s even been a good 19 years. That’s 19 years of Red Racer. 19 years of Stripe, the first through the sixth. 19 years of friends who Craig guesses aren’t actually total shit. Clyde’s going to miss him; he doesn’t know anything about this superhero bullshit. He’ll have no idea what really happened.

A fat tentacle rears back over Craig’s head, casting a thick dark shadow over him. He closes his eyes tight. It shouldn’t hurt but all the same he doesn’t really want to die. He could do with 19 more years of a pretty good life.

He waits. And waits. He’s afraid to look because he doesn’t want to see it coming to crush him.

But it takes too long and, shaking, Craig opens his eyes.

There’s someone standing in front of him. Between him and the demon. Wild blond hair, green bomber jacket, and a baseball bat dripping black blood.


	3. Wonder Tweek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: blood, mild gore.
> 
> Thank you for the comments!

The boy standing in front of him is taller, but the explosion of blond hair is a dead giveaway. He doesn’t even have to turn around.

Craig’s mouth stays stuck on the first sound of his name. The blood soaking the the bat drips into a small pool on the pavement. The whiteness in his knuckles, the tear in the bomber jacket, the way his shoulders seem held high. The familiar boniness to his arched and angled fingers. The flex of muscles when he takes a step away.

“Tw…”

Tweek breathes out and Craig feels the air around him freeze. There’s a wet gurgle and the spider demon rears back another tentacle -- Craig’s still not sure what happened to the first one, but the bloodied bat might be a clue. It’s about to slam down and crush them both. Where the fuck are Kyle and Stan?

Craig tries to get up and grab Tweek to yank him out of the way, but his leg won't move. Fuck.

“Tweek!” His name cracks against his throat.

Tweek grips the bat tighter, not turning to look back at Craig. His fingernails scrape the wood as he holds it out.

The fat tentacle drops. Craig doesn’t close his eyes this time. He watches as Tweek blows a cold breath, the air turning white with frost as it rises to meet the tentacle.

It freezes the tendril solid, stuck in place like a snapshot in the dark. Without a beat Tweek hauls the bat back and smashes the limb. The crisp sound of cracking ice echoes through the air. The tentacle shatters like glass, and the stink of raw meat wafts out as it breaks apart, blood on the inside unfrozen and pouring out.

A pool of it splatters over Tweek’s head.

He bends his knees and jumps, leaping a good six feet into the air, up towards the remainder of the tentacle. He rears the bat again and smashes the spider’s limb lower towards its body. It shatters again, the flesh inside squishing with a wet plop at it drops to the pavement. Tweek doesn’t stop. He lands back on the ground, blood dripping from his hair and hands, and runs full-tilt towards the spider’s head.

The demon is screeching, from anger or pain Craig has no clue. His gaze stays stuck on Tweek. The pounding of his sneakers on the street sounds like it’s inside Craig’s head, reverberating off the folds in his brain. What the fuck is going on?

The blond roars -- the most normal, Tweek-esque thing Craig has seen so far -- and drives the bat down across the spider’s face. There’s a hollow crack of breaking bones. The slick slip of ripping muscle. Tweek hits its face again, and again, and again, each time a thud ringing out and into Craig’s ears.

Tweek jumps up into the air again, the spider’s six white eyes following him. Its remaining ten-or-so tentacles twist and turn up, curled to lash out and dismember some part of the blond. Craig can’t see his face still but he knows Tweek isn’t afraid. He hears him suck in a sharp breath and watches as he blows it out, expanding over the demon’s tendrils like a soft flowing winter wind. They’re fronzen instantly and without pause Tweek rears the bat back and begins pounding them apart, one by one.

The fat sound of flesh slamming into the concrete echos around Craig, making him feel a little sick, even in his state of awe. Blood pours out onto the street around the falling chunks of the spider's body.

Before he can process it, the demon is a bloody heap of mashed limbs and flesh.

Tweek’s covered head to toe in black demon guts and slightly brighter black blood. He’s panting when he lowers himself to the ground.

“Wha…” Craig manages. He’s still on the pavement, holding himself up with his hands. He can’t move.

Off on the far side of the dead demon heap, Kyle is shouting. “Tweek, what the fuck!”

“Is that Tweek?” Stan asks.

“I think,” Kyle says. Then louder: “Tweek, where the hell did you come from?!”

Tweek doesn’t answer them. Still dripping blood he stands still -- as still as he probably ever gets. Craig watches a twitch roll through his shoulders. It shakes droplets of blood from his blond hair.

Craig pulls himself up until he’s sitting fully, trying not to groan. “Hey,” he starts, his ankle screaming at him to _stop fucking moving_. His voices comes out a little rushed. He feels like running. Tweek hasn’t been in South Park in six years.

 

“Are you okay?” Craig asks.

Tweek doesn’t answer him. He looks off into the distance, like something had called him. Wrapping his green bomber around himself, he grips his bat and bounds off into the night as sudden and focused as an alleycat.

Craig feels like he’d just been slapped.

“Dude,” Stan says, walking towards Craig with Kyle by his side, “What the fuck.”

“I guess Tweek’s a hero?” Kyle shrugs as the two of them stop in front of Craig.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You saw him.”

“But he left South Park back in like...”

“Seventh grade,” Craig says, looking over at the crushed pile of spider demon.

Kyle looks over at it too. “I guess it doesn't matter.”

"Are you sure it was him? How could he have powers?"

None of them are sure when, why, or how the superhero personas they’d imagined as kids had become real. Freaky shit has gone down in South Park since Craig can remember. Cthulhu, crab people, aliens, weird shit like celebrities moving in or picking a fight with someone -- generally Cartman -- or Stan and Kyle getting too involved in political drama. Nothing ever just rests here. Nothing’s ever just calm. So Craig figures the universe is giving them away to deal with it all. If South Park is going to be screwed up as a twist-tie then its citizens deserve a way to handle it.

But if Tweek has his powers, then something else is going on. 

"I don't know, Stan."

“You mean it’s not the town?"

Kyle pauses before he replies. Craig can see the slow breath he takes, one that looks necessary to calm him down. “Stan, we have no idea why we have powers.”

“Wendy said the town gave them to us.” He says it in defense. As if Wendy Testaburger could never be wrong about anything, not even if she said the sun orbited the earth or gravity was a concept that only worked because everyone believed it would.

Kyle takes another one of those breaths. “That’s what she thinks, yeah.”

Craig had no idea he and Wendy agreed on something. Though in his opinion it’s a pretty weak theory; Wendy’s usually sharper than that.

“Then how could Tweek--”

“It’s a theory, Stan. We don’t know anything.” Apparently done with that particular conversation, Kyle looks down at Craig. “You need help standing?”

Craig holds out a hand. Kyle grabs it and Craig hauls himself up on one foot, very slowly. “It’s sprained, I think,” he says, putting a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. He could have sworn his whole leg was broken. Maybe it was just shock.

Stan’s giving him a look that creeps him the hell out. What the hell is his problem all the fucking time lately?

Kyle shifts to stand closer. “Have you talked to Tweek at all since junior high?”

Craig had messaged him a few times when he’d left in seventh grade. They’d been doing their fake-dating-whatever thing since the fourth. That’s three years. He’d figured-- he didn’t know what he’d figured. That Tweek would keep in touch maybe. But he’d never messaged back, and his facebook profile disappeared within a month. Tweek never really owed him anything, so he’s never been mad about it. It just is what it is.

“No,” Craig says.

“Hey guys.”

Mysterion’s voice cracks through the air. Over the years he’d stopped masking it -- mostly because they’d all hit puberty and McCormick’s voice came out the other end of that scratchy-smooth and deep all on its own. Lucky him. Craig’s voice is more like the kind of scratchy comparable to rusted nails and chalkboards.

“Hey Mysterion,” Stan says, and when he’s finally looked at him he adds, “Hey Chaos,” with a wide breadth of caution.

Craig’s glad Butters is there. McCormick is way better with him around. Craig’s no prude, but jesus the guy is graphic. At least when Butters is with him he’s more of his analytical, thoughtful self. Most of the time.

“Gosh fellas,” Butter says, staring with his typical wide-eyes at the pile of thawing flesh, “What happened?”

Stan and Kyle explain everything to McCormick and Butters, who are just as amazed as they are. 

And then Kyle helps Craig get home.

He’ll never tell anyone he lets Kyle fly him home in his arms when he gets hurt. As far as Craig’s concerned -- and he’d made Kyle swear -- he’d limped his way home every time.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to--”

“No.” Craig shakes his head. He does not thank many people -- there is a very short list. But Kyle Broflovski had made it about a year ago. “Thank you,” he says, knowing how forced and awkward he always makes it sound.

“No problem.” He sets Craig down at his front door, landing quietly beside him. “Sorry we didn’t…”

“It’s fine.”

“It isn’t,” Kyle says, always a goddamn baby about everything -- or a goddamn sweetheart, Craig guesses, depending on your perspective. “But it was good to see him, huh?” Kyle smiles, probably sincere. Craig is noncommittal about that question. He shrugs. “Are you gonna try to find him?” He shrugs again.

“Probably not.” It’s none of his business.

Kyle pulls his hood down. His red hair sticks to his face with sweat. He looks at Craig oddly.

“I’ll see you Monday.”

Craig nods, and Kyle flies off.

He hops into the house, the sound ridiculous and too-loud in the dark entryway and kitchen. Very carefully he continues up the stairs and into his bedroom, gripping the banister and clenching his teeth the whole way. In his room, he wraps his ankle in some bandages from a first-aide kit he’d been keeping beside his bed since last year.

Once he’s finished he realizes he should probably put ice on it. But that would involve hopping on one foot down the stairs, which would be way more dangerous than just leaving it. So Craig changes, brushes his teeth -- he always, always, always brushes them -- and slips into bed. His ankle hurts like fuck but he ignores it.

He doesn’t fall asleep for hours.

 

* * *

 

Kenny shucks Mysterion’s outfit off in his bedroom, leaving it on the floor. He ruffles his sweat-soaked hair to shake the night out. The problems, the thoughts, the words Butters had said. There's never been any use trying. Somethings, like the seasons and the sunlight and the molecular makeup of water, just stay constant.

He goes to brush his teeth, but there’s really only enough toothpaste left for one more person, so he leaves it. He splashes cold water on his face and looks at his reflection.

Tired. That's all he can see. Tired, the person he'd been creeping into before he started talking to Chaos, the sick realization that that person looks more and more like his father everyday. Tired. Tired. The bags under his eyes screech it. Tired tired tired. You can't fight it if you're too exhausted. It'll wear you down. It'll win. It's easier to drink. It's easier to stop. It's easy-

“Ah- fuck it.” Kenny glares away from the mirror and stomps out of the bathroom. He's never played victim in his fucking _life_. Why start that shit now?

It's easier to quit, but he's not going to. At the very least he has to do it for Karen. -- _and yourself!_

That's not his own inner voice. Words he can't shake off, can't erase.

Kenny flops onto his bed, the broken springs groaning. Blue eyes and an infectious laugh. Easy understanding. The desire to be kind. He rolls over and shoves his face into the pillow. Everything about Butters follows him -- the echo of his voice, warm and bright, the irate sarcasm when someone tries to fuck with him, the freaking _sass_ \-- who knew -- god Kenny wants to text him. Fuck that, he wants to call him. His chest aches. He'd never thought it could.

When Kenny does fall asleep, he has another nightmare. He wakes up in a cold sweat alone in his room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments again! I feel like the plot's taking forever to unfold... and also I do very little editing before I post these... and oh I lied to someone. I actually ended up buying the game (it's good guys).
> 
> Anyway, enjoy :)

 

Chemistry is his first class Monday morning. Kyle gets to school early, coffee in one hand and text books clutched in his other arm. His mother’s nagged him about being too young for caffeine every morning since he started drinking it. She doesn't understand. He’d taken four extra classes a term last year, having been given permission by the principle to study the course material in his own time and take the exams at the end of the year. He’d needed coffee. She should be glad he’d never switched to energy drinks.

Now it’s a habit. At least this year he can enjoy it in the slow morning, brew it as the sun comes up over the mountains alone in his kitchen.

“Kyle!” Stan’s at his side almost like he’d popped into existence there. Kyle should wonder at how not weird it is, how everyday it feels. “ _Dude_.” Stan grabs his upper arms in a death grip, nearly spilling coffee all over them both. The pupils in his brown eyes are shrunk. His jaw is tight, straining the tendons in his neck. Kyle feels his eyes roaming and glares hard instead at Stan’s nose.

“What?”

“It’s today.”

Kyle waits for an explanation he should know isn’t coming. He shifts to get a better grip on his textbooks. “What’s today?” He asks, fumbling as his calculus book slips from the middle of the stack.

Stan catches the hand Kyle’s got his coffee gripped in, just before he drops it. “Wow.” He keeps his hand there. A warm burst twists in his gut, feeling as low as Stan’s voice when he says, “Careful man.”

The textbooks slip from Kyle’s other arm and crash onto the floor at their feet.

“Shit,” Kyle says, trying to kneel down to pick them up.

Stan keeps his hand on the coffee, holding it and Kyle up in place. “Hold on,” he says, pushing the coffee towards his friend before bending down to gather his books.

“I can get it.”

“It's fine dude,” Stan says.

Kyle watches him with wide-eyes down at his ankles. Stan's black hair is messy from the fall wind and Kyle's eyes lose themselves in it like some dark twisting forest. There are too many turns in the straight blackness for his gaze to follow. The double crown it comes from, hair that falls in tufts neatly around his ears and down the nape of his neck where Stan's skin is darker than his own, pulled in goosebumps, and shoulders that'd grown after their second year and Stan had decided to play every sport, just all of them, and expected Kyle to go to all of his games, and the muscles further down, strung along his arms right as h-

“Shit,  _owe!_ ”

“What now?” Stan asks from the floor.

Kyle shakes hot coffee from his hand. “Nothing.” His heart is pounding.

“God you have a lot of these.”

“Yeah.”

Stan stands up, holding Kyle’s books. He doesn’t make any move to give them back. Kyle turns on his heels, facing his locker instead of his friend’s brown eyes.

“So what the hell were you talking about?”

“Huh?”

Kyle unlocks his locker, and Stan sets his text books inside, handing him his chemistry one for their first class.

“You said something’s today.”

“Oh.” Stan’s pupils are back to their normal size, maybe a little larger. He blinks twice before he speaks again. A small smile spreads over his mouth. “My date with Wendy.”

Kyle closes his locker firmly. “Oh.” He turns around to face Stan again, smiling. “Congrats dude. It’s about time.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you guys going?” He asks, leaning his back against the locker.

“She said there's a new café downtown she wants to check out.”

“Cool.” Kyle smiles again. “Make sure you're on time. And clean your car out if you're picking her up.”

Stan snorts. “Are you giving me dating advice?”

“No dude.” Kyle folds his arms and looks at his friend with great pity. “That's really just standard life advice. Be on time. Clean your car.”

Stan rolls his eyes.

“And wear that dark blue button up your mom got you last year,” he says, against his better judgement.

Stan raises his brow. “What?”

“Just do it.” Kyle closes his eyes as he takes a drink of his coffee. “And don't wear your fucking hat.”

Stan chuckles, warm and bright and deep in his chest. Kyle opens his eyes, hoping he wont be able to hear it quite so clearly. “Well if I'm ever on a date with _you_ dude I promise I'll do all that.” Stan's lips turn up into a warm smile, a real one, the kind that reaches his eyes and he says, “Wendy's not gonna care.”

Kyle beats down the knot tying tighter in his gut. “If you say so.”

“Good morning, ladies,” Kenny practically sings, leaning a shoulder against the locker beside Kyle’s. “How are your fine asses this morning?”

Stan snorts. “Hi Kenny.”

“Morning,” Kyle says. He takes another long drink of his coffee. “Why are you here so early, dude?”

Kenny shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d beg you to tutor me before class.”

“You’re trying to catch up?” Kyle asks.

The blond nods. “I still want to get me and Karen out of here, even if… You know.”

Kyle feels himself smile for real for the first time since he woke up this morning. Kenny’s never been great at academics. Not that he can’t understand the material -- he just doesn’t put the work into it. Butters had been studying with him for the better part of last year, but so far this year Kenny’s mostly been skipping. Kyle had been worried he'd given up for good.

“Alright. Leave it to me.”

Kenny grins at him, and then looks at Stan. “And you, Stanley?”

“Huh?”

“Would you like to join us?”

Stan’s been a lost cause since their second year. Kyle’s surprised he’d passed last spring. He’d fought with him to study, but it always ended in Stan telling him to piss off, or telling Kyle he’s not his mother, or some other variation of ‘leave me the hell alone.’ So Kyle had quit asking.

Maybe Wendy will get through to him.

“Uh.”

Kyle watches the clock down the hall while Stan speaks, thinking about where he should start with Kenny.  He’s missed pretty much the entire first unit on molecular bonding.

“Sure,” Stan says.

Kyle doesn’t hear it for a few seconds.

“Great,” Kenny replies, leaning towards Stan and running their arms together.  “It’s a three-way.”

Stan rolls his eyes. “God Kenny.”

“I’ll let you top.”

“No thanks.”

“Okay, I’ll top.”

“ _Jesus_ dude.”

“Kyle can top?”

“Why are you like this.”

Kenny grins and waves a hand through the air with flourish. “Years of parental neglect.”

Kyle can’t speak. He doesn’t know if he’s pissed off, surprised, or just confused. He’d fought so much with Stan to study, for almost _all_ of last year, and all Kenny has to do is fucking ask? _Once_?

When Kyle looks over, Stan’s face is flushed with embarrassment and he wonders if the universe is planning some cruel joke.

 

* * *

 

Craig walks into chemistry that morning feeling like the bags under his eyes are leading the way, dragging him through the door. Stan, Kyle, and everyone are sat at their usual table, and Craig plunks down in his seat across from Bebe like always. She frowns at him while he digs his books out.

“What the hell happened to you?” She asks.

Craig can feel McCormick’s smirk on the back of his head. “Our Romeo saw his Juliet last night.”

“That play ends in a double suicide,” Craig says, flipping Kenny off as he puts his books on the table.

“Our Antonio met his Sebastian?” He tries again, this time with an appeasing smile. Craig's surprised McCormick knows anything about Shakespeare. He’s also surprised about the accuracy of that second reference.

He doesn’t react to the joke anyway.

“Oh--” Wendy looks up from her phone. “Right. I saw him this morning.”

“Who?” Bebe asks, leaning over to look at Wendy’s screen.

“Tweek.”

Craig rustles through his bag for his headphones this time, not really in the mood to listen to anyone. He’s got an A so the teacher usually lets him get away with it.

“Really?” Bebe looks from Wendy to Kyle and back to Wendy, but sounds uninterested. Craig’s pretty sure they weren’t close. “He’s back?”

Stan does that weird snort-huff thing through his nose; he’s done it since third grade. “He swooped in last night like fucking _batman_ and saved Craig’s life.”

Craig rolls his eyes, still bent over his backpack. If you ask him, Stan’s the resident drama queen of South Park. Last night wasn’t that dramatic.

“What?” Wendy asks.

“He beat the shit out of a demon. With a baseball bat.”

“ _Tweek_ did?”

Craig doesn’t realize Bebe’s asking him until he’s found his headphones and is back up at their table, about to put them in.

“ _What_ ,” he snaps, frowning at all the eyes staring at him. The only person not looking is McCormick who probably thinks he’s got Craig all figured out. Fucking asshat. He doesn’t know crap.  
  
“Are you sure it was Tweek?”

Craig shrugs and puts his headphones in. He leaves the volume low enough to hear his friends. At some point, hopefully, they’ll talk about the important part of last night.

As always, Kyle drags them in that direction. “It was him,” he says, folding his gloved hands on the table. “We don’t know why or how, but he’s a hero -- and that’s not the weirdest part.

“Tweek killed it without using the symbol.”

Beside Kyle, Stan is smiling lopsidedly at Wendy. It's so afterschool-special and generic-rom-com that Craig might as well have thrown up in his own mouth. Kenny looks over at him, eyebrows pulled up in some sort of invitation or hint or solicit -- Craig doesn't want to know. He flips Kenny off and ignores Stan and Wendy. Whatever. Good for them.

“Did it have one?”

“We didn't even get a chance to look.” Kyle scratches at the back of his head. Craig frowns. That's something Kyle does when he's nervous-- is it really freaking him out that much? It’s a little concerning, he guesses. Someone being able to kill demons without the symbols. “Tweek just showed up and…”

Kenny finishes for him. “Minced it.”

Craig gets a flash of blood soaked blond hair. Crackling cold white knuckles.

“I guess we ask him about it?” Wendy says.

Bebe looks at Craig. He slouches in his seat. “ _What_.” He drops one headphone from his ear, frowning at her. “I’m not talking to him.”

“He’s you’re--”

“My what?” He cuts her off.

She glares at him. “Your _friend_ , asshole.”

“He is not.” Craig hasn’t spoken to him in six years, just like everyone else. Tweek left and dropped Craig off the face of the planet, just like everyone else, so why should he give a shit if he’s suddenly back in town? “He was Clyde and Token’s too. Why don’t you go ask them?”

“Do you see them here?”

“Not my fucking problem.”

“I’ll do it,” Kyle says, cutting both of them off. “If Tweek knows how to get rid of them without needing to decipher those insignia, then we need to ask him.”

“Agreed,” Bebe says, “Me, Token, and Craig spend hours looking those things up. You don’t even know. And Token’s starting to think we’re all in a cult.”

“If you’re telling Token, I get to tell Clyde,” Craig says.

Bebe glares at him. “We’re not telling them anything. They don’t need to get dragged into this shit.”

“What are you even protecting them from? They played it with us when we were kids. What if they get attacked and they have no fuckng clue what’s going on?”

“You seriously think this has anything to do with some dumbfuck superhero game we played as kids?”

“It fucking looks like it.”

“Okay guys--” Kyle holds his hands up. “We’re not doing this right now.”  He looks over at Stan, who is still gawking at Wendy. He sighs and continues.  “We need…” The redhead trails off as Wendy tugs on his sleeve. She nods towards the door at the front of the lab.

Tweek Tweak walks in, wearing skinny jeans and a too-big cozy brown sweater. Craig blinks, like it's some dust stuck in his eyes and not a real live person standing corporeal in the room. Somehow it feels more surreal to see him here than it had last night - suddenly Craig’s aware of his own breathing. There's something earthy about it, the brown sweater and his blond hair and forest green eyes. He'd always looked a little wild. Craig looks away, at his hands and then the wall littered with positivity posters.

_Reach for the moon and you’ll land among the stars!_

“He looks… normal,” Wendy says, tilting her head.

Craig assumes by ‘normal ’ Wendy means ‘the same as before.’ There are still trenches dug deep under his eyes, and the same strain on his jaw, neck, and shoulders. He looks wigged out and wide-eyed and jumpy. Just like he had six years ago.

Hadn’t he gone away to get help?

He’s clutching a cup of coffee from Harbucks like a lifeline, too, just like he always had. But he’s dressed better, Craig guesses. If you care about the kind of shit.

Craig looks out the window. A bird’s chirping on a branch, bright yellow in the morning sunlight.

“He’s dressed better,” Bebe says, making Craig jump internally. He looks at her like she’d hit him. She quirks an eyebrow but otherwise ignores him. “I wonder where he got that sweater?”

“He’s wearing converse,” Kenny says. He looks over at Kyle, then Stan, and then even at Craig, before looking back at Tweek. As if Tweek wearing converse is infinitely more strange than him leaping from the shadows to maul a spider demon with a bat at two in the morning.

Craig puts his chin in his palm and yawns.

Tweek walks through the room and to the teacher’s desk. His steps aren’t confident, but Craig feels his own eyebrows climb up his forehead; Tweek walks right over and talks to her. His lips stutter over a few words, Craig can’t really hear them, and Ms. Wharf points to a table near the back but on the other side of the room. Tweek nods, doesn’t smile, and heads in that direction.

He catches Craig’s eyes on his way. His shoulders go taut and he freezes in place for an awkward few seconds. He tugs at an ear, his coffee starts shaking slightly in his fingers, opens his mouth and closes it a few times. Craig keeps staring. What else is there to look at and really, _really_ , he’s been gone for six years. Wouldn’t it be weirder for Craig not to look?

“H-” The first syllable sticks. White teeth clamp down on a bottom lip red from wear. Tweek shifts his backpack over his shoulder, sniffs, and for a moment Craig Tucker is ten years old again. “... Hey, Craig.”

It’s like his throat turns to sandpaper and someone shove dusty-dry cotton down it. Some kind of noise comes out of him, but it’s muted and _gross_. He doesn’t know what expression his face decides to make but as soon as Tweek sees it he goes white. Craig tries to drop it but something worse must take its place because Tweek jerks and his muscles stiffen even more, probably to the point of hurting.  Looking away, he shuffles to the table he'd been assigned and sits down, looking straight ahead. His spine is as stiff as a board.

Craig feels utterly betrayed by his own fucking face.

“Dude,” Kyle says, “What was that about.”

But Craig just shrugs -- it's probably better not to clarify. He's not even sure he could. Kenny grins at him like he knows something; but he doesn’t. He can't. Because Craig doesn't know either. He has no freaking idea.

“Aw, Craig.”

Craig flips him off.

When class ends, he finds his feet standing for him, his backpack forgotten under the end of the table. The classroom’s cold as it empties. Outside, though he’s not looking, he can still hear that stupid bird chirping its tiny head off.

Tweek’s gathering his books and all the material he’d missed, organizing them in his binder. He’d always been messy as shit with his bedroom but organized in other ways, weird ones. He’d organize the kitchen for his parents, alphabetize their coffee grounds, line up his pencils in class, clean _Craig’s_ room -- but his own stuff was always in chaos. Is that some sort of lacking? Or an expression of selflessness? that he’d keep everyone else’s things neat and leave only his own in disarray.

Craig’s stuck staring for a moment without a word. He’s aware of his breathing again, in and out, the slow reminder of life.

“Tweek.” Like a spell his name draws his green eyes over. Craig feels weird suddenly again. Like he’d cheated.

“Ah!”

“Sorry,” Craig says, “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Isn’t he angry? Should he be angry?

Tweek relaxes a little. His coffee has to be gone but he still grips at the cup. “It’s okay.”

As an innate feature of himself, Craig doesn’t find silences awkward. But this one, filled only with that stupid bird and the rhythmic tick-tock of the clock across the room, is definitely awkward.

“Craig, look--”

“I just wanted to say thank you for last night,” he says, gripping the strap of his backpack, reflecting the grip Tweek’s got on his coffee. The bird outside had stopped chirping, but Craig can still see it on its branch. “Other than that, I don’t care.”

Tweek looks up at him. His mouth opens in a small space. His hands stop twitching. Every inch of him seems to freeze, another level of the tension he always carries with him. This kind’s worse.

"What?"

Eyes like dewy leaves blink up at him. "Last night," Craig says again, the squeak of rubber echoing in the quiet classroom as he shifts on his feet.

The blond squints at him, confused, maybe even thinking Craig’s the unhinged one.

“What are you talking about?” Each word is strained, tired. Tweek looks him up and down.

Red hot embarrassment strikes like a wire through his chest and head. Suddenly again Craig Tucker is ten years old, but this time it’s the version of himself that wet the bed at Kyle’s birthday party and got called Craig Pisser for six weeks.

He flips Tweek off and leaves the classroom, his cheeks hot.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a very good chance of some k2 happening in this story. I didn't plan for it but I'm done trying to fight it.
> 
> I'll comb it over for typos eventually, but if you see any let me know.

 

 

 

 

 

> _And yet, even yet, if this might be,_  
>  _I, falling on his faithful heart,_  
>  _would breathing through his lips impart_  
>  _the life that almost dies in me._

 

 

Glacier-green eyes chase him out of the room. Craig can feel them at his back, sinking in like hooks. He’s pretty sure Tweek calls out, asking him to wait, but Craig shuts the door behind him.

His head hurts a bit as he walks down the hall. He has trig in five minutes but he thinks he’ll go home instead.  
  
“What happened?” Bebe asks him, standing at her locker as he makes his way to the front doors.  
  
Craig hopes his face is back to a normal colour. He wonders if at any age he’ll be able to control it. “Nothing.”  
  
“Right.” She’s got a hip jutted out and her arms folded. Craig doesn’t stop to talk to her. He's done with today, and his bed is at home waiting for him. But she snatches his shoulder and pulls him to a halt. Turns out being the captain of the cheerleading team keeps you pretty fit. Her grip hurts. “Did you ask him?”  
  
Craig shrugs her hand off and takes a step back. Awhile ago he wouldn't have told Bebe anything. But after a year of this shit, they’ve all learned that sharing information just makes things easier.

Besides, Craig’s not some horror movie slut who gets murdered from lack of good decision making. He’s coming out of this nightmare town alive.  
  
“It wasn't Tweek.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Last night.” He slouches, shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “He had no idea what I was talking about.”  
  
Bebe frowns. Her curled blond hair bounces as she shifts onto her other hip.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Her voice has this note of pity that makes Craig want to hit something.  
  
“Okay, okay,” she says, “Jeeze, your bitch face is worse than Wendy’s. If it's not Tweek, then who the hell is It?”  
  
“How should I know?”

“You’re sure it wasn’t him?”

“Why are you asking me?”  
  
“You were there.”  
  
“So were Kyle and Stan.”  
  
Bebe looks at him like he might have something seriously wrong with his brain. “They're not here.”  
  
“So go find them.”  
  
“God what is your _problem_?” She waves a ring-adorned hand up and down his person, his entirety, and takes a step towards him. Craig holds his ground. “You're so fucking-- obstinate about everything. We’re all just trying to figure this out. Together. Like we said we would this year. But every time I’ve asked you about Tweek today you’ve shat all over the place. It's like--"

She stops. Her brown eyes search him, down to his toes and up to the crown of his head. Then they widen. Craig can almost hear the synapses and nodes connecting like chain links, pulling ideas and facts together into meaning.

Bebe’s lips form another perfect circle, and she looks at Craig with clean and clear eyes. Her ‘oh’ expression slips slowly into a smile.

He feels hunted.

Or haunted.

Both.

“Craig Tucker."

"What?" He takes a step away from her now.

She doesn't say what. She grins at him, sly and long like McCormick’s.

" _What_?" He asks again.

Bebe shakes her head and laughs.

 

* * *

 

No one's home when Kyle gets back from school. The house is still and silent, matching the sunlit snow outside. It always snows in the fall and this year's no different. Kyle feels the weather like a metaphor -- a pathetic fallacy: repressive, repetitive. He keeps hoping things will be different this year, that he’ll feel different than he’s felt for the past eight years, but so far it's all the same.

He sits down in his kitchen, afternoon coffee brewing and its warm scent filling the room. He loves when no one's home. His parents are great (sometimes), and Ike’s fine (more than), but it's peaceful without them. No one asking him to clean up, reminding him of his homework, or clanging around the house. No one with any expectations of him whatsoever. He’s not a Brainiac here, no one's chasing him for study help. He’s not being asked to find a way into some abandoned building to erase a blood circle, he’s not helping Bebe and Craig look up occult information in weird parts of the internet. He’s just Kyle, in his kitchen, drinking coffee in the late afternoon.

He likes being supportive. It’s something people have always complimented him on. But quiet breaks like this, where he can think about himself or just listen to the sound of snow falling, keep him sane.

His phone buzzes. Before Kyle even picks it up, he knows his alone time is over.

He understands that he could just put his phone down. He could turn it off and walk away, literally if he needed to. At the same time Kyle knows that he won’t do it. At the same time he knows that he can’t. He sighs and flips the phone over, unlocking it and opening the message.

It’s Stan, and looking at it Kyle thinks his heart is so tired from caring it sinks to the bottom of himself prematurely.  
  
Stan 4:04pm  
_dude_!

Kyle 4:04pm  
_What_?

Stan 4:04pm  
_im outside her house! freakin out!_

Kyle thinks about Stan sat uncomfortably in his old corolla, gripping the life from his phone in his panic. If he’d listened then he’s in his blue button up, the nicest shirt he owns, and not wearing his hat. His hair’s probably a mess from running his hand through it. His eyes are definitely wide and maybe even a little red from not sleeping the night before. His palms are probably sweating, and he’d be tugging at the back of his neck. All of that anxiety born from the need the impress, to flatter, to show that he really does like her. Kyle sighs lowly and replies.

_You’re fine dude._

_im not fine shes gonna b here any sec_

_Yes Stan. That’s how dates work._

_ky this is no time for ur sass_

_im literally dying_

_omg shes walkin over_

_Put your phone away._

_ky im gonna throw up_

_No, you’re not._

_shes in the fuckin driveway_

_holyshitsholyshti_

_i cant believe this is happening thank you so much i never woulda asked her on mybown_

Kyle looks away from the phone screen to stare out the window, beyond the town and the meadow and mountains behind it. Six months, that’s it. Just six months and he can forget about everything. SYU’s Library Science program starts next September. He’s already applying for loans, looking for apartments. There are eight billion other people in the world.

His phone buzzes again, bringing his attention back down to its smudged screen.

_holy shit dude shes so beautiful_

Kyle blinks at the screen, the short sentence eating at his eyes. beautiful. Beautiful. Growing up in this town had thickened his skin enough not to give a shit at words he’s called. Jew, faggot, whatever. He didn’t think some form of reverse would be untrue; that what he’s _never_ been called could crack his chest apart like it is now.

_Happy for you. Now stop texting me and enjoy your date._

He puts his phone down, muting it. It sits on the table now looking like a landmine. No one’s going to be home for another hour, but Kyle doesn’t feel like drinking coffee in the kitchen anymore. He heads upstairs. There’s calc homework to do, and research about that insignia Kenny had found. No end to the distractions available.

But after he’s climbed the stairs and passed into his bedroom, he walks over to his mirror instead, not his desk, and stands in front of it. His feet sink into the carpeted floor. There’s someone staring back at him and of course it’s himself — but it feels like a fake. That can’t be him. The stupid orange hair, the slight-hooked nose from breaking it so often as a kid, the awkward way his head sits on his shoulders, that he’s not very tall. Nothing about him is desirable. He gets it.

_be——_

All the mistakes jump out at him; his thinness, the lines cut around his too-far-apart eyes, the tilt of his chin, the lack of enough muscle to matter. He doesn’t need to ask himself what Wendy has that he doesn’t. Aside from being a girl, she has a cute bright laugh, while Kyle’s is loud and scratchy and embarrassing. She’s smarter than him, too. She bests him in calculous every week.

Maybe if he had straight black hair. Dark features and a larger mouth. If his eyes weren’t so close together.

“This is stupid,” he says to himself, because it is, it is so fucking stupid. Glaring at his reflection, Kyle sets a hand on the mirror over his eyes and nose. This is why he wants to get over it. Jealousy, longing, how easy it is to convince himself he hates Wendy. The way he wants to change who he is. Kyle doesn’t like his feelings getting to him. He wants to be happy for his best friend. He wants to focus on his own shit. He doesn’t want to hate himself, wish himself away. He doesn’t want to turn into a fucking baby because—

_dude shes bea———_

“Stupid.” He drops the hand that had been on the mirror, looking away from it. His feet feel heavy, like the ground is still trying to swallow them up, but he makes it to his desk anyway.  
  
He sits down and boots his computer up. It takes his old machine a minute too long and Kyle catches his reflection again, the fiery hair, the weird eyes, crooked nose, the weird lips, no flux to his chest and barely any muscle.

_holy shit dude_

_shes so beautiful_

The computer beeps on, but Kyle lies his head in his arms and sighs. “Six months,” he says into the sleeve of his sweater. The heat of his own breath ghosts over his face. He closes his eyes. The whirring of his monitor takes over the room, fill his head until his already-sunken heart finds rest in some deeper part of him. He falls asleep to it in minutes.

“Kyle.” The voice sends a shock surging through him and he jumps, nearly knocking his head against the monitor.

Mysterion is at his window, beside his desk, pulling his dark hood back as he steps into Kyle’s room. His blond hair looks almost pink in the sunset. Kyle must have passed out for awhile — the sun’s almost gone behind the horizon.

“Mysterion,” he says a little senselessly, blinking the sleep from his eyes.

“Get changed.”

Kyle perks his head up. “What’s going on?”

“I need your help.” Mysterion folds his arms and sits on the windowsill.

Kyle is already up, peeling his sweater off and heading towards the closet. Look likes calc homework and research and moping have to wait. He trips a little over his pants when they’re down at his ankles, but kicks them off in time.

Mysterion stands and starts pacing near the window, his footfalls hurried and his tone a little off. “It’s Chaos,” he says.

Kyle looks over at him, turning away from his closet wth his torso half inside his aqua suit. “What happened?”

“Just come on.”

He pulls his jumpsuit on and flips his hood up, fear building in his chest. Chaos had very nearly been on their side a few months ago. He can’t imagine why he’d left; whatever’s going on Kyle is absolutely sure Butters isn’t acting of his own will. The Coon is a shitty hero and an even shittier person and Kyle has never seen Butters look at someone the way he looks at Kenny.

He hurries over to his friend’s side, holding out his hand. “Let’s fly.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh you’re sweet, aren’t you?”

Choas opts not to reply. The whole ‘don’t talk to strangers’ thing might be for little kids, but right now it seems like solid advice. He wipes blood from his bottom lip and glares up at her.

“Silence is a virtue my dear but unfortunately I’m from hell so your virtues mean very little.”

Her voice floats out with a rolling cloud of blue gas. He covers his mouth, but the smell seeps it. Something like blue fungus and cold rust.

This demon is humanoid - at least at the moment. Her skin is a painful looking bleachy white, and she has six eyes tapered across her forehead. Chaos has done a bit of research on types of demons, from which levels of hell and which domains and subterrans. He’s not an expert but she looks like one of Morax’s, with the gemstones growing out of her skin.

“Do you think he’ll come?”

Chaos sure wishes he wouldn’t. He wants to keep Mysterion as far away from this monster as possible. There can’t be anything she wants with Chaos. He’s pretty much a nobody, in his normal life and as a-- a villain, he guesses. But Kenny is someone important.

He hates that he's bait. That he gets in the way and is inconvenient. He's trying to be anything but.

 

* * *

 

Mysterion had had another dream after school. Or maybe ‘hallucination’ is a better word because as far as he can remember he wasn’t sleeping. The symbol had been there again, this time branded on his back and bleeding a hyperized red colour, like neon but more organic. He couldn’t pin the shade down.

“What happened next?” Kite asks him. Probably Mysterion had been quiet too long.

He looks down over South Park, fifty feet up in the air. He’s not afraid of heights any more than he’s afraid of all the other billions and billions of ways to die. But he still doesn’t like looking down.

“Some woman took Chaos. Or a witch. I don’t know.” Mysterion shifts in his friend’s arms, sat there bride-style. “She told me he’d be at the pond.”

“You’re leaving something out,” Kite says. Mysterion looks at him, a bit perplexed. “Hey dude I know you. What else?”

In the dream, he had killed Butters. He’d been the demon and he’d devoured him like a coyote might tear apart a large rabbit. He’s had some pretty fucked up dreams -- you don't watch pornos with titles like _Big Dicked Sluts_ and _Teranchula Ass Blaster_ and come away without a pissed off subconscious bent on revenge. But he’s never killed anyone.

“I killed Chaos,” he says, avoiding Kite’s studying gaze.

Hands tighten around his back and shoulders. Mysterion’s not complaining -- if Kite dropped him he wouldn’t die, but it would still hurt.

“It’s just a dream.”

“Maybe.”

Kite sighs. “We’ll figure it out. You’d never hurt Chaos dude.” Strong hands shift just under the back of his neck. “It’s probably just some low-level demon screwing with us for fun again.”

Mysterion shakes his head. “Something’s going on,” he says, “Tweek came back, I keep dreaming about being a demon, Chaos switched sides on us.” He looks up at Kite, honestly a little scared. Not for himself -- he’d given that up years ago. He’s afraid for his friends. “I think shit’s about to get decently fucked.”

“It's a good thing we’re here to fix it like always then.”  
  
They reach the pond a few minutes later. Kite sets him down gently, the frozen grass beside the water crunching under his boots. He lands next to him just as softly and not for the first time Mysterion thinks that Kite does that backwards. Shouldn't he land first before dropping off his cargo? And, knowing Kite, there's some reason he does it that way. He's always worked in metaphors. Like living poetry, Mysterion's always thought.

“Alright. Where do we go now?”

In his dream, he was inside a dark room. A cave maybe, or a hole. He can't think of anywhere in Stark’s pond like that.

“I don't know,” he says, looking out over the dark water.

Kite sets a hand on his shoulder. “Well come on. We’ll find him.”

Mysterion follows him in silence.

 

* * *

 

“Oh sugar, looks like your boy is here. Nice to have a knight in shining armour, hm?”

Chaos digs his fingernails into the soggy, poris ground under him. The walls arund him seem to bend and fold like they’re breathing. He’s soaked in whatever’s covering them. Some thick goo. Why’s everything from hell gotta be so creepy? It’s all a bunch of unnecessary bravado if you ask him.

“Not very talkative, sweetness.” She shakes her head at him, all six of her eyes closed.

He wishes Mysterion were here and wishes he didn’t want that, all at once. It’s his own fault after all.

 

* * *

 

“Kite!” Mysterion shouts, just as Kite trips over his own feet and splashes into Stark’s Pond. There’s no tail to use as an excuse. As a real hero the only kite on him is the picture of one across his back -- he trips into the pond all on his own.

The near-winter water seeps into his clothes ad grabs at his skin. He stands up as soon as his feet find solid ground, gasping loudly.

“Holy f-f-fuck,” he says, shaking as a cool wind blows over his wet skin.

Mysterion steps down to the pond’s edge. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” Kite wraps his arms around himself, turning to look down at the water. The ground under his feet is solid — hard like stone. He’s been in the pond enough summers to know there’s nothing but mud on the bank. “I think there’s something down there.”

“What?”

He doesn’t try to explain it or fight it; sometimes feelings come and he’s learned to just accept them. Taking a deep breath, Kite sinks back down into the murky water.

He hears Mysterion yell, panic in his voice, but ignores it for now.

Fully submerged, Kite opens his eyes wide. A silver set of stone stairs gleam back at him, too clean and new to have been here for long.

He lifts himself back out of the water, his head hurting from the cold temperature. Mysterion looks somewhere between worried and angry—Kite thinks it suits him, caring so much.

“You coming or what?” He says, smirking up at his friend.

 

* * *

 

Mysterion rolls his eyes and climbs into the swampy water, his cape dragging heavy behind him.

“You can be a little shit, you know that?”

Kite just smiles at him. “I thought I was a total babe.”

“You’re both,” Mysterion says, before pushing his friend face first into the pond.

As they swim through the cold water, grabbing each descending step to pull them down further, Mysterion starts to wonder. How are they holding their breaths this long? What should he think of the fact that he’s not the only one with a real superpower now? Is Chaos afraid? Once this is over, all of this shit, will he still be immortal or will he finally lose his power like everyone else? If that’s even the outcome of this.

There’s even more he doesn't know now. Way more than when he was a kid.

A the bottom of the stairs, there’s a dark sphere floating suspending mid-water. Kite’s heading right for it. Mysterion pulls him back by the end of his shirt tail, propelling himself forwards; Kite turns around to glare at him but Mysterion ignores the look. He reaches out to the sphere and hot electric sparks scrape up his arm. He turns again to look at Kite, holding up a hand to tell him to wait. Kite rolls his eyes but nods, fine. Mysterion gives him a small smile before throwing himself through the sphere.

It’s a hellgate of one kind or another. They’ve seen enough to know.

He drops out on the other side, his shoulder hitting a soft porous floor. It squishes under him. He’s inside some sort of cave, the same one in his dream. He isn’t dead, anyway, so he pops back through the black hellgate. His head freezes in the water — but the rest of him is warm inside the cave. Mysterion grabs Kite’s sleeve and pulls him through the sphere with a sharp grin.

Kite lands beside him inside the cave, crashing onto his ass. “Owe.” He pushes himself up, palms sinking into the spongy floor. “Ew. Where the fuck are we?”

“Looks like the inside of a vagina to me,” Mysterion says.

Kite glares. “Sick dude.”

“Or an a—”

“Stop,” Kite covers his mouth with his hand, “Just stop.” Mysterion smiles into the hand plastered across his lips. “Is this really a good time for you to be grossing me out?” Kite drops the hand to let him answer.

The flesh-walls around them groan, a smell swelling off them like decay and fungus. “I think Chaos is okay,” he says.

It doesn’t take Kite very long to catch on. “You think he’s bait?”

Mysterion’s sure of it. “Yeah.”

“What would some demon want with you?” Kite asks.

Mysterion shrugs. “What do they want with any of us?”

“Good point.” He looks down the hall. “Should we get going?”

“Lead the way, shit-babe.”

Kite rolls his eyes at the name, avoiding Mysterion’s eyes, before turning and heading down the blackened hall.

 

* * *

 

“They're almost here,” the demon says, her pretty nails poking into the bulbous walls. Liquid leaks out, dripping down her white arm, black like ink.

Relief hits Chaos in a cool wave. At least Mysterion’s not alone.

“Two heroes coming to your rescue. Quite a flock of gentlemen callers you've got.” The demon’s smile reaches too far, too close to each ear. “Care to share?”

What sort of ancient, infinite hellinite wants anything to do with an eighteen year old? Chaos isn't surprised about it -- just a little confused. Nothing in South Park really surprises him anymore. Does she realizes she's playing into the typical villianness archetype? Wanting sex with her antagonists? She's probably capable of more. He knows a thing or two about being on the bad side.

It isn't more than ten seconds before Mysterion’s violet hood appears from the lightless hallway in front of him.

Chaos’s heart trills at seeing him. With his cape, tufts of blond and his grey eyes like foggy early mornings. He can remember waking up to them and how easy is it, then, to drop back onto those memories, pull them out like a dream.

“Chaos,” Mysterion says, cutting a line towards him.

Human Kite enters the room behind him soon after. His head his held high and alert, watching all the places Mysterion isn't -- which is everywhere that isn't Chaos he notices, feeling shy despite the situation.

“Hello, boys,” the demon says. It doesn't stop Mysterion from getting over to him, but Human Kite freezes in his tracks. “Nice to know you can read a dream.”

“Are you alright?” Mysterion kneels down in front of him. A warm hand finds Chaos’s upper arm. He hasn't felt Kenny on him in months and his chest emtpies out instantly, inarguably, like something had exploded in there and left him hollow. It hurts, and Butters reaches up to hold the hand there.

“Aw Ken,” he says. He slips his fingers in between the ones under his own. “Why'd you come, huh?”

“Of course I came.”

There's something between them, Chaos can sense it sometimes, almost see it. Not the way they like each other or their wants and desires and wishes for their future. It's physical. A sound, or reverberation, gravidic and booming. A real force that calls back and forth between them.

Butters doesn't know if Kenny can feel it too, or not.

“Who are you, and what do you want with Chaos?” Human Kite asks.

Mysterion hasn't looked away from him yet. Chaos watches the fog of his grey eyes swirl around, missing quiet nights.

The demon laughs. She hikes her voice up an octive to mock him. “What could a demon _possibly_ want with Chaos?” She rolls her eyes and glares down at them. “And I thought you were the smart one, little kite.

“Anyway, it's none of your business, is it? Whatever befalls the mysterious hero and the uncertain villain.”

Kite balls his fists. “It’s my fucking business.”

“There's something I want,” the demon says, looking over Kite’s head.

She sticks her arm out, and like a broken jaw the joint unhinges. A crack shudders through the small hot cavern. Mysterion turns away from him finally, eyes on the demon but hand held still under Chaos’s.

The demon continues, “But it involves an impossibility, one I will rectify.”

Her disjointed arm whips out and snatches Mysterion by his throat and collar. He's dragged from Chaos’s hand out into open air, and even though Butters grips at his hand he's gone. He feels his fingernails scrape at Kenny’s skin.

Chaos tries to stand, but he's stuck to the floor. “Mysterion!”

Human Kite is up in the air, his eyes burning bright blue. Before he can zap her the demon reaches out with her other arm, the bones snapping as the grow to reach.

“Kite, back down!” Chaos hears Mysterion shout.

“No fucking way dude!”

The demon’s other hand, the one over Kite’s head, opens in a razor-lined claw. Her white fingers are webbed, veins bright pink. Her grin is a slice through skin from ear to ear and her six eyes gleam in untethered joy.

“Please,” Mysterion says, his voice husked from the grip on his collar. He looks at the claw hovering like an umbrella over Kite’s head. “I got this.”

Kite looks at the claw digging into Mysterion’s chest. Blood starts pooling out, sliding down his stomach, all the way down to the toes of his boots. “Doesn't look like it,” he says.

“Trust me.”

Glaring, Kite drops down to the wet floor in a thump. Chaos wants to shout at him to burn the bitch; heck he wants to burn her. But he can't move, hasn't been able to, so he waits with his heart hammering.

“Camaraderie, how cute.” She drops the hand over Kite’s head, the bones shrinking to their original size and back at her side. “This thing that I want -- this _fragile-_ ” she squeezes Kenny until more blood gushes out of him, “fleeting improbability-- it comes at a cost. Are you ready, little nightrunner?”

“Kite, get Chaos out of here.”

“What?” Butters hears himself say it but he swears his mouth hadn't moved.

“My name is Fame,” the demon says. And she crushes Kenny’s chest with her claws, squeezing until his ribs turn concave and crack apart. His body makes a wet _pop!_ sound. Butters hears him groan, gargled and hoarse.

Rolling like lightening Butters feels a scream tear through him. A defiant one. One that tries to pull backward on time to undo everything.

“So nice to meet you all,” Fame says, and she drops Mysterion like a useless brick.

As soon as she’s gone Butters rips himself from her spell and drops down at Kenny’s side. Nearer to the back he can hear Kite saying _fuck_ over and over like it might be a cure.

Kenny's body lies lopsided on the ground, his torso out of synch with his legs, his stomach swabbed with blood, his eyes unfocused, his world detaching from their own.

“Ken--”

“Hey, no…. “ Kenny holds up a wobbling hand, bloody fingers wiping tears away before they fall. “Not that. Stop.”

Butters grasps the red fingers and presses Kenny’s cold palm to his cheek. “Why'd you let that happen?” He asks.

Kenny smiles up at him, and Butters watches the gap in his front teeth, the sporadic freckles, the blood leaking through cracks in his chest. He dry-heaves a sob.

“I'll wake up in the morning.” His voice is delirious, his grey eyes glossed and unfocused, like Butters is some planet far off he can barely make out in the darkening sky. “You wanna meet me there?”

He presses Kenny's hand harder against his cheek like it might keep him there. But it’s getting colder and colder; there's a roar echoing inside him, hateful and desperate to deny this reality. To fight it until the whole universe bends.

That thing between them starts to flicker. Spasm like it doesn’t know what to do with one of them fading. A light that Butters can watch die inside of him, on display in midair.

At some point Kite had come to sit beside him, but his presence is a muted and forgettable nothing. He feels like his stomach has been scraped out clean.

Holding him while each final inch of life slips away, Butters tries to remember what Kenny had told him on the rooftop of the Bowling Alley. He repeats it in his head like a prayer.

 


	6. Chapter 6

  
The beating of his ceiling fan wakes Kenny up the next morning. The fan hasn't worked for as long as he can remember, but the wind from his broken bedroom window always propels the blades. The sound it makes is low and booming as it draws him from sleep.

He hadn't expected Butters to be there, waiting for him in his room, but he always kind of hopes someone will remember. Which is crazy. It's been over a decade. How can he keep wanting someone to show up after? Kenny had given up on a lot of shit in his life -- his mother, his fucking father, his older brother, his grades, fighting his addictive nature, getting any answers about his "condition," and that’s just the start -- so how can he keep wanting someone to remember?

Maybe it's because Leo actually believes him. Maybe it's because he'd asked how many times Kenny had died, and hadn't thought he was crazy when Kenny said it had been happening his whole life. Long before they'd all been randomly bestowed superpowers.

And so the unrelenting hope is there, along with the silent stillness of his cold bedroom each morning he comes back.

"That's enough," he tells himself. No fucking whining allowed. Kenny slips out of bed.

He pulls on black sweats and an orange sweater, ruffles his hair to shake the dust from his room out, and heads down the hall. His mom and dad are passed out in the living room, tv still on; he can hear it from the hallway. He raps gently on his little sister's door.

"Karen, you up?"

"Yup!" He hears her walk over to her door, then she opens it. His little sister is seven years old and barely comes up to his hip. Her brown hair is already tied into pigtails, she's dressed, and she smiles up at Kenny without any front teeth. "I did my own hair today. How's it look?"

It's a little lopsided, but Kenny had read that at her age it's better to encourage than correct, at least when it comes to things like hair.

"It's perfect," he says, "Good work."

He makes breakfast out of what they have. Dry cereal and water. Kenny digs an apple out of his secret stash of food he hides in a cooler behind the fridge, inside a crack in the wall. He had to keep it tied shut so rats can't get in. He gives the apple to Karen, who tries to get him to eat it.

"I'm pretty much done growing," he says, setting it in her palm again. "You need it more than I do, shortstuff."

Kenny walks her to South Park Elementary and shows up thirty minutes late for Chemistry like he does most mornings. He's tried to think of a way around it, but he can't afford the morning program at SPE to drop her off early, and the high school is a thirty minute walk away. The guys all think he's a lazy shit but he doesn't feel like he has to correct them. It's true anyway, even if it isn't the reason he's late for first class on the mornings his parents get too stoned to take care of their daughter.

Ms. Wharf doesn't give him a hard time about it. Maybe she knows, or can guess, because his dad had come to parent-teacher last year wasted out of his mind.

He slips into his seat beside Kyle and does his best to catch on to the lecture. He's weeks behind, but he takes whatever notes he can. An education, even a mediocre one, is his best — only — shot at getting out of this town.

They get the last twenty minutes of class to review for a test happening next week — Kenny hasn't heard about it yet but isn't surprised he doesn’t know. Bebe and Wendy come over to sit with them, pulling out note books and spreading their stuff out like they’re nesting birds. Kenny thinks it’s a girl thing and one he can relate to at that.

“Bee and me were up all night,” Wendy starts, flipping open Craig’s sketch book until she finds the page with the new symbol on it. There is a half-hearted protest from Craig which is promptly ignored. “But we can’t find anything. It doesn’t it exist - at least not in Hell. Are you sure it wasn’t just a dream, Kenny?”

He looks from Wendy at Kyle, more for solidarity than any sort of expectation or hope. Kyle just looks back at him with patient confusion.

Kenny feels his stomach growl, angry with hunger. He can’t remember the last meal he’d had and dying always makes him hungry. “I’m sure,” he says, looking back at Wendy’s dark eyes.

She’s very pretty, in a classic 1950’s way; he can see her in a fifties-style vintage dress and a scarf, holding a martini in a black and white movie. Saying things like ‘back seat bingo’ and ‘raz my berries ya big actor.’ It’s not hard to see why Stan’s so infatuated — distracted — enthralled. Wendy’s classically beautiful.

Kenny’s not sure what Wendy sees in Stan, exactly.. She’d once confessed to Kenny that she has a thing for blondes, tall loud ones who get shit done and do it right. He can’t think of a description any less like Stan Marsh.

“I met her yesterday,” he starts, answering Wendy’s question, but stops when he notices Kyle speaking over him:

“I saw her yesterday,” he says. Everyone’s eyes are on him.  “She—”

“ _What_?” Stan’s brown eyes go wide and he glares at his friend from Wendy’s side. “When? Why didn’t you call us? Are you okay?”

Kyle looks at his friend cooly. “I’m fine,” he says. “I didn’t exactly have time to get my phone out.”

Stan frowns at him. “You shouldn’t do stuff like that alone.”

“No choice.”

Kenny leans back in his seat, breathing out slowly. He should’ve figured Kyle would remember everything (sans-Kenny).  He usually does.

“Anyway,” he continues, before Stan can speak again, “She took Butters and told me to come get him. He’s okay,” Kyle adds, looking at Kenny. “We got out fine. She sort of just… disappeared.”

Kenny hadn’t known for sure until now, though he’d figured Butters and Kyle were fine when he’d looked at his phone and there weren't a hundred messages about them being dead. And he trusts Kyle to keep Leo safe, no matter what.

Fame hadn’t been there to kill them anyway, or she would’ve just done that. She needs something from them.

“Do you know her name?” Craig asks, taking his sketch book back from Wendy. She snickers at his glare.

“Fame,” Kyle says. Craig checks the spelling with him — some names are Latin, Sanskrit, ancient Chinese — Kyle says he thinks it’s Latin — and jots it down under the symbol. “She said she has something impossible to do.”

“Any idea what it is?” Bebe asks, her phone in her palms again.

Kyle shakes his head. “None. Sorry.”

She waves a hand to dismiss his apology and starts tapping away at her phone.

“I’ve never heard of a demon named Fame,” Stan says. Kenny studies the lines around his mouth, bags under his eyes. He’s playing four sports this year, or trying to, soccer, football, lacross, and the swim team. He needs to chill the hell out.

Beside Stan, Wendy asks, “What did she look like?”

Kyle lists off her physical traits like a grocery list. “Tall, humanoid, white skin — like real white — red veins everywhere, six arms, and she could like… break her joints to grow her arms out longer. Her fingers were webbed too.”

Kenny remembers the way they’d spread out like an umbrella over Kyle’s head, ready to suffocate, crush, or stab.

“And clawed,” Kyle adds.

“Oh _wonderful_ ,” Craig says, not looking up from the sketch he’s making. He seems a little tense. He’s a guarded person, Kenny doesn’t need to be a psychic to know that, but normally he’s pretty relaxed around them.

Kyle must notice it too because he asks, looking just beyond Craig’s left shoulder, “Have you talked to Tweek yet?”

“Yes.” Craig snaps it out like a gunshot. Nothing else follows. In the resounding silence he looks up to find expectant glances and says, “What.”

“Did he know anything?”

“It wasn’t him.” Craig looks back down at his note book.

“Uhh…” Stan says, “I’m pretty sure it was, dude.”

“Well it wasn’t.” They all keep staring. Kenny can practically see Craig’s back curl up like a pissed off cat’s. “You can go ask him if you want.”

“It’s okay,” Kenny says, breaking apart the conversation, “Whoever it was will show up again and we can try to talk to him.”

Kyle nods, catching on to the topic change. “Right. And for now, we finally have something to go on. If anyone finds anything, put it in the dropbox so everyone sees it.” The dropbox is just a shared offline file Kyle had set up for them to store and share information. “Or let me know and I will.”

Stan looks at Kyle. Kenny feels himself start to smile, but hides it with his hand. It’s probably a little sadistic but he likes watching their drama unfold. 

“If she tries to fuck with you again dude,” Stan says, “call one of us. Don’t be stupid.”

Kyle doesn't reply.

On his way from Chemistry to Trig, Kenny sees Butters in the hall. It isn't the first time since they broke up that he’s seen him around -- South Park is a small town and so is the high school. But he doesn’t normally look at him. Butters had dumped him and even if Kenny doesn’t understand why he’s not some fuckboy who’d nag someone to come back to him. He’s giving Butters all the space he needs — while still trying to keep him away from Eric and alive, at least, but Kenny thinks that doesn't count. That’s something Mysterion has to do.

But he lets himself look today. It’s only once out of all these months.

Big chocolate eyes are already staring back when he does, even and unwavering, like the act of looking keeps Kenny there. Leo can never remember, just like everyone else. There’s no relief or concern at knowing he was hurt and seeing him alive. As soon as Kenny’s gaze finds his Butters drops his eyes.

But he’d been _looking_. And Kenny, remembering what no one else can from yesterday, will take all the small joys he can get.

 

* * *

 

Bebe watches Wendy leave Chemistry on Stan’s arm, frowns at the places where they touch: their upper arms, hips, and her palm to his wrist. She has known Wendy since they were seven years old and has seen her date exactly three people. Billy Mason in third grade, some kid Bebe can’t remember with huge ears in eighth grade, and Scott Malkinson last year who is actually pretty cute now. Wendy has liked exactly one of those three guys — Scott. Bebe knows what she’s like when she really likes someone. She giggles and plays with her hair and smiles blaringly like some made-for-tv pre-teen romcom. She gets shy and says really weird shit. She starts forgetting things, like homework, her purse, what she did with her hairbrush, what day it is, or if she’d turned her hair straighten off that morning, hell if she’d even used it.

She does not speak confidently around them, she does not retain her rational and get-your-shit-together nature, and she does not smile calmly when asked about him. She loses her mind. That’s just how she is around guys she likes.

If Wendy likes Stan Marsh then Bebe will eat her own fucking hair. All of it.

“Craig,” she says, rounding up in front of him in the hallway. He glares at her but that’s nothing special.

“What.”

“I’m coming over tonight.”

“Okay?” He shrugs overdramatically, sticking his hands in his sweater’s front pocket.

Bebe nudges him with her elbow. The guy needs some cheering up, stat. He’s been pissy since Tweek and that maybe-not-Tweek showed up. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“What do you think Wendy sees in Stan?”

Craig sniffs, his crooked teeth showing as he half scowls and half looks at her like she’d sprouted a dragon’s head out her ass. Freaking piss-baby. Why hadn’t he ever had braces, anyway? His parents have the money. He’s not bad looking really but braces would improve his look. She knows Craig probably doesn’t care about it — but she wishes he did. It might help him feel better.

“How should I know?”

“Do you think she even likes him?”

“I don’t think about it. At all.”

Bebe pouts. “Well, what about Stan?”

“What about Stan.”

“I always thought……” He’d never dated anyone. He’d said he liked Wendy and had since the third grade, but Stan Marsh had never done anything about it. Just followed her around and talked about her like she was the moon and he was the ocean. Maybe that’s how he is: procrastinating, afraid, and wasn’t ready until now. “I dunno. Do you think he really likes her?”

“I don’t know him that well.”

“Uh huh.” She tugs at the left tail of his hat, twirling the string around one of her fingers. “You don’t talk much Craig, but I know you pay attention.”

He pushes her hand away gently. “Tonight?” He asks.

“Hm. See you then.”

 

* * *

 

Craig is sitting on his back deck before Bebe comes over that evening. He’s watching snow fall, the first of the real winter season. It’s always some form of winter but between November and March the snow falls in heaps. There’s warm tea clutched between his gloves. Lavender. He can’t remember when or why he started drinking it. It’s leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

“Weirdo,” his little sister’s voice snaps from the backdoor. He cranes his neck to look at her, feeling dreamy from being alone for so long. “There’s someone at the door for you.”

It must be Bebe. Normally she comes around back. Craig gets up, sets his tea in the kitchen, and makes his way to the front of the house. She’ll want to fucking talk — about Wendy, mostly, and apparently about Stan too. What should Craig know about it? Stan is as bleak and blank to him as white paper. If he’s dating Wendy then he likes Wendy. There’s no gray area with the guy. He’s single layered.

“Hey—” He starts, seeing a face in the doorway and not registering it right away as too-dark to be Bebe.  

Stan Marsh is blinking back at him, eyes as red as the fabric of his football jacket, pooling water behind them like a siv about to blow.

“Can I talk to you?”

“No,” Craig says, reflexively. He grips the door frame and looks Stan up and down.

“Just for a second.”

“Okay: one. There's your second, now leave.”

Stan frowns at him, nearly a pout, his thick eyebrows screwing up like frustrated caterpillars. Craig's own eyebrows are plucked into some kind of order. Bebe had done it for him one day and he'd liked it enough to keep up with it.

“Please,” Stan says. “I'll pay you if that's what you want.”

“What.”

“I can't talk to Kenny, he's too fucked off about Butters. And Wendy…”

“I. don't. care.” Craig emphasizes each word as their own little unit, hoping that way the meaning will drive through Stan’s thick skull.

“I know.” He stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets and Craig is wildly irritated because he knows he does that too. “It's about Kyle, okay?”

Craig wants to snap back with ‘So go talk to him.’ It's the easy way out of this, and logical. Kyle's too good for Stan, who's the kind of person who'd come crying to Craig’s doorstep for help with someone who's supposed to be his ‘super best friend.’

“Fine,” is what Craig says, instead of the aforementioned comeback. He steps outside with Stan. Like hell he's letting the guy into his house. “You have five minutes.”

Stan is taller than him but just, barely one fourth of an inch. But he's wider, soccer and football and lacrosse and the swim team and whatever other jockey shit he gets up to. Heroism too, Craig guesses, but Stan's garbage at that.

“Okay.” He breathes out slowly, as if for some reason this is hard for him. “He went out without me last night, I mean… When he went after Butters.” Snow starts dropping down into his black hair. Craig frowns at it because it looks sort of pretty, and it pisses him off. “He didn't even text me. I know he said he didn't have time but that's bull.

“He doesn't talk to me anymore. We don't… we used to….” Stan sighs. “It's gonna sound gay okay? But we used to spend the night with each other, like every night. I know we’re almost twenty but fuck-"

Stan cuts himself off, a sharp silence following.

Craig fights the urge to shove his hands into his pockets. “Can you get to the point.”

Stan scratches at the back of his head, near his neck and ears. He looks a little pale. “I'm worried he's gonna go out on his own and get himself killed. Kenny can't be there for him and I guess he doesn't want me to,” his voice cracks on ‘want’ and he swallows.

Craig actually thinks Kenny can be there, and is, but doesn't say so.

“Can you just…. Like. Look out for him,” he says, looking down at Craig's feet. “And if he gets into serious shit call me. I know he talks to you dude.”

He doesn't. Not like how Stan means. But Craig has no vested interest in telling him that. If things between them aren't good he should be talking to Kyle, should be at _his_ doorstep all puppy eyes and pathetic.    

But Craig already looks out for him in whatever ways he can and he does think it isn't safe for any of them to be off doing shit alone. So it's not a big deal for him.

“Okay. Anything else?” He asks, frowning at him.

Craig can't totally explain his dislike for Stan. Most of his friends have grown on Craig since the start of high school and this whole hero extravaganza. Kyle’d always been fine, if a little too involved in everything, McCormick is annoying as hell but Craig's not an idiot — he knows himself and knows he likes Kenny for his flowery, flirty disposition and how unafraid he is to flaunt. Cartman is an asshole none of them like. But Stan just seems to lag behind, and Kyle never looks glad to see him anymore, and McCormick always frowns at him. Craig is just taking queues. He's so static and blinded and stuck. Why is he here? Why not ask Kyle or at the very least go to his goddamn girlfriend? Why the roundabout? Craig can't stand people who skirt around their problems.

“Nothing else,” Stan answers, looking over at Craig finally. “I guess don't tell him I asked you.”

“Why?” Craig asks, not aware he was going to. It's no longer alarming to him that he cares about these people though, so he owns the question, staring at Stan's brown eyes.

Stan shrugs, and somehow it's the saddest thing Craig's ever seen. There's too much weight to it. “Its like…” His eyes glass over like he's lost to the breadth of the world, gone in the listless way trees breathe in sync with the seasons, lungs of the earth. “...every year, he wants less and less to do with me. And I think since we're going to college, this year is the… the one where it ends. You know?” Stan's eyes snap back to reality, to being whole, at least in a corporeal sense. “He'll just get pissed if you tell him,” he finishes, looking at Craig again.

 _I should talk to Kenny_ , he thinks. He makes a promise not to keep this to himself indefinitely. Kyle might be better off without Stan — or he might not. Fuck if Craig knows.

“Okay,” he says again.

Then Craig turns on his heels and slams the door in Stan's face. Kicked puppy look be damned.

The next time he opens the door it _is_ Bebe. She makes herself some tea then follows Craig to his room. His parents smile and greet her, thinking the obvious, telling them to leave the door open. Craig snorts at the command.

They go through pages of buried information on sites and archives, a lot of it useless. There's no demon named Fame in anywhere in history they can find. An hour in, Bebe turns to him from his bed, where she's using her laptop, and speaks.

“So Stan and Wendy,” she says, as if it hadn’t been eight hours ago when she’d first breached the topic. “What do you think?”

Craig grunts front his desk. Bebe nudges him with her foot until he answers. “I don't know. Hasn't he liked her since we were nine?”

“I guess.”

“Then he likes her.”

“But…”

She doesn't finish. Craig turns away from _Ancient Beasts of Malthal’oot_ to raise an eyebrow at her. “Why do you even care?”

“Because she's my best friend? We can't all be cool and unfeeling robots like you.”

“I’m—”

There's a thud against the outside wall of his bedroom.

Bebe looks at the books on his shelf as they vibrate and topple over.

“ _Oh_ shit,” Craig says - just before something rips the entire north wall off of his bedroom.

It's freezing outside, and the warm air inside sucks out into the sky. Bebe screams and Craig sighs. The oozing arm of a brown hellmuster slinks around the side of his house and grabs Craig by the chest, another arm snapping in to snatch Bebe too. She screams again, but is reaching into her pocket for her phone.

The muster drags them out of the house and into the cold. Bebe shouts into her phone, “NEED HELP AT CRAIG'S WE’RE GONNA FUCKIN DIE SO HURRY YOUR SKANK ASS UP BITCH!”

Once finished, Bebe throws her phone at the hellmuster’s third eye. It smacks with a crack and the demon screeches at her from it’s squid-like beak.

Craig looks at the sunset and wonders if his life will ever be calm and boring, just the way he likes it.

Bebe snaps her fingers. A red flame flares up, hovering in her palm. She chucks it at the muster’s right eye. Hellmusters are weak demons and the insignia on their backs are for fire; lucky them The Bae breathes it like a dragon. She chucks three more fireballs at its eyes, blinding it in seconds.

“Goddamn,” she curses, looking at her burned sleeves. She looks at Craig next. The mustser has stopped running, rubbing its head into the frozen grass of Craig’s a front lawn. It's about the size of  school  bus, and it's lion-like body takes up most of the yard.

“Are you good?” She asks.

Craig shrugs. “Normal.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Not really.”

Bebe presses her palms together, heating them, then sets them down on the demon’s claw around her waist. It hisses and drops her. Bebe lands on her feet but falls back on her ass, groaning.

“God _damn_ ,” she says again, swelling up a wad of fire while she stands. She rears back to throw it, teeth grinding, but something beats her to the punch.

The sun's almost gone but the sky's still pink and Craig can see him clearly. The guy in the bomber comes flying out of nowhere, wooden bat in his hand and jacket waving in the wind. He smashes the arm holding Craig and the demon drops him.

Craig shouts in surprise. He's not far enough from the ground to get hurt, not the kind of hurt that'd matter, but he hadn't expected the world to start rushing up at him so fast.

The guy in the bomber lands on the ground, drops his bat, and catches Craig.

He grunts as he crashes down. In strong arms he blinks until he can see right and there's no doubt anymore. Tweek Tweak’s forest-wild eyes gleam down at him.

“What the fuck.”

There's something off. His eyes aren't right. They're glossed over, too wet, too much like a phantasm. He's looking right at Craig, but he's not there, not awake.

Behind them, Bebe screams, followed by a metallic crash. The hellmuster had thrown his mother's car into one across the street. Shit.

Tweek doesn't move.

“Tweek,” Craig says, looking up at him.

He looks back down at Craig, but doesn't answer. His head twitches.

“Tweek.” The hands at his back are steady. His arms are taut, stronger than they'd looked in class. “Tweek. You need to go help Bebe.”  Craig doesn't know what the hell is going on, but that much is easy. Hellmusters might be lower level demons but taking on one alone is dangerous.  “Put me down and go help her,” Craig says, shifting in his arms.

No pupils, he realizes, looking at his dream-like eyes.

“Okay?”

Tweek sets him down on his feet, hands not leaving until Craig’s standing sturdy. He picks his bat up and gives it to Craig, who takes it in a state of perplexed wonder. Then Tweek flies over, picks up the blond from her spot near the smashed cars, and returns with Bebe in his arms like a princess.

“Tweek!” she says, gawking up at him.

He sets her down next to Craig, plucks the bat from him, and flies back off towards the demon.

Bebe beams at him. “It _is_ Tweek!”

“Yeah.” Craig looks down at his empty hands. He can still feel warm arms on his back. It's definitely Tweek, there's no way to question it now. He remembers exactly how he feels. “Something fucked is going on,” Craig says.

Bebe turns to watch Tweek, mid-air, beat the crap out of the muster. It doesn't take more an a minute.

“He's a badass!’

Craig frowns. “He's not there.”

She doesn't look away from the fight. Neither does Craig. He watches as Tweek pounds the hellmuster into ground beef, blood fountaining out to seep through blond hair.

“Hm?”

“Something's wrong.”

She doesn't comment. When the demon is a mass of pooling blood and ground organs, Tweek walks back over to them, rather than flying. There's blue blood smearing his cheeks. Green eyes are wide and unable to focus, hazed over like mist in a hot jungle, irises blown huge and pupils still gone.

He looks like an animal. No matter how Craig stares he can't catch his eyes the way humans do.

“Thanks Tweek,” Bebe says.

But the blond ignores her. Tweek drops his bat, the wood clanging on the dark pavement. Vaguely Craig is aware of the sound of Call Girl and Toolshed shouting for them, somewhere near his house. He doesn't take his gaze off the blond.

He remembers suddenly and for no good reason the time Tweek had called him at two in the morning in fifth grade and asked Craig to meet up at the top of the hill behind City Wok. They stayed up all night talking about getting out of South Park. How many years would it take. _Where would we go?_  The conversation remaining happy until Tweek told him the reason he’d called. He'd fought with his parents. _About what?_ Tweek tugged at his hair and told Craig about his parents sneaking heroin in his coffee all those years and then Craig had stood up, thrown a rock down the hill and sworn at the general unyielding nighttime around them. _Fuck this town_. Tweek had told him to sit back down and he had. Something happened after that. Craig can't remember.

Slowly, his whole body buzzing, Tweek scoops Craig up in his arms again. He tips him backwards and catches him gently. Craig feels his cheeks go warm as his feet leave the ground. He looks up at uncanny, unfocused eyes and wonders what the fuck is happening.

“Craig!” Bebe calls.

He just shakes his head. “Whatever.” He frowns up at Tweek. “Don't fucking drop me.”

He's carried off into the sunset with strong arms at his back and his heart slamming into his ribcage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Craig and Stan was unintentional. I don't have any control over this fic anymore.


End file.
